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Friday, 23 August 2013

Today Let's Talk about Surface Brightness


Give the definition of surface brightness.

The surface brightness of an extended object, for example a galaxy, is the radiative flux per square arcseconds on the sky.


                                            ------- 
---------------------------- |   D   |
             d                            --------

D= area on the sky in [square arcseconds]
d= distance of the galaxy we're considering [parsecs]

This galaxy subtends an angle alpha on the sky:

α=Dd

If I measure the luminosity L of all the stars into the area D I've the TOTAL flux:

F=L4π(d)2

So I can define the surface brightness with this formula ( very important):

I=F(α)2=F(Dd)2=L(4π(d)2)(Dd)2=L4π(D)2

I[magarcseconds2]

References:
 1)http://asd.gsfc.nasa.gov/David.Davis//courses/phys315/week6/week6.pdf
 2)http://www.astro.spbu.ru/staff/resh/Lectures/lec1.pdf 


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